Adrian said:
> I remember picking up a copy of Excession at a bookstore and flicking
> through the first dozen pages, thinking 'What the hell is all of this
> about?' Luckily, after I'd done this half a dozen times I pressed on
> and discovered the gold mine.
Both times I read _Excession_ I found it really hard to keep track of
the relationships between the ships (although I have no trouble with
drones for some reason). I think that newcomers to the Culture would
find this rather than large number of plot threads the hardest aspect of
_E_ to handle. Next time I think I'll draw a big diagram.
(Over on the Culture list we've occasionally written pastiches of the
ship conversations when we've been feeling especially bored or silly
[or when we've been exiled to our backup listserver], and it's even
hard to keep track of myriads of ships when they're characters that
you've invented yourself.)
>> Whilst _Use of Weapons_ was certainly surprising I didn't think it
>> was *that* shocking. It's far and away my favourite of the Culture
>> novels to date, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone.
>> But perhaps that's just evidence that I'm Evil...
>
> Well, do we require any further evidence?
*shrugs*
Rich
GCU What Do I Care What You Think?
